


Power & Control

by necklace



Category: K (Anime), 文豪ストレイドッグス | Bungou Stray Dogs
Genre: Alternate Universe - Tattoos, Gangs, Gen, Non-Graphic Violence, Past Sexual Assault, Universe Alteration
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-28
Updated: 2017-08-28
Packaged: 2018-12-20 22:00:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 804
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11930145
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/necklace/pseuds/necklace
Summary: The moment he meets Dazai fucking Osamu, Kunikida knows in an instant that this is not a man to be trifled with.OR: The AU where Kunikida never became a teacher, and the record of the gangs he's joined paints heavy and permanent on his skin.





	Power & Control

**Author's Note:**

> *shows up late to kunikida's birthday with starbucks and an au where kunikida was a member of several gangs in his youth, including HOMRA, apparently*
> 
> title from marina and the diamonds' "power & control"

**I.**  
When Kunikida Doppo turned ten, his birthday present was a gang tattoo on the skin over his shoulder blades that made him cry and bleed and scream for someone to stop inflicting so much pain onto him. Ironically, the shoddily-done angel is a reminder of what he can't be anymore, _refuses_ to be anymore, and he takes great pleasure in covering it up with layers of clothes and a mask of indifference.

It is not his life anymore, but it _was_ his first tattoo, so something in him feels fond of it. Feels fond of a shitty angel in a pretty dress too disproportionate for her too skinny frame.

The name given to him, a nickname by his ~~coworkers~~ abusers, was tossed into the trash with little regard to who found it.  
  


 **II.**  
The second tattoo, given to him at 14 after his previous gang kicked him out and onto the streets, was in a hole-in-the-wall parlor in Tokyo. He was taken into the basement, far from other customers, and given a deep black raven, its wings spanning broad and large over his ribs with the body resting in the space between his bones. It was beautiful, and paid for by the then-boss (a man too sleazy to be considered powerful), who took Kunikida under his wing and taught him how to perfect his knife wielding skills.

That boss died three weeks later, Kunikida's hands stained red and his fifteenth birthday just around the corner. He didn't cry at the loss of another life, and looking back on it, Kunikida wonders when other humans became so worthless to him, when mortality was held so loosely in his calloused palms.

He left that gang by choice with just the clothes on his back and the stain of a barely-healed raven on his ribs, and found himself in the arms of another gang within the half-year, though not willingly.

He changed his name.  
  


 **III.**  
The third gang, and where tattoos three, four, five, and six happened, were in the hands of an older woman dressed too pretty to be suspected of leading an organization so ruthless.

Dressed in black and red, lipstick never out of place, Kunikida doesn't want to say he was her _favorite_ , but she looked at him and pet his hair and helped him dye it when he couldn't stand to look at the natural black anymore.

She set him up with an entire sleeve of colorful tattoos, and paid for them as well. His entire right arm consists of fourteen different flowers, crawling up his arm and bicep and connecting them all with a vine of poison ivy ending at his collarbone, precise and beautiful and gifted to him at seventeen.

(As a repayment, Kunikida gave her his virginity and everything else in between. Even today, he's not sure if it was worth it, but she stepped down from her position when she got too pregnant to be unnoticeable.

He never knew what became of her, and never wants to find out.)  
  


 **IV.**  
He stays in Tokyo for two more years.

A man named Kusanagi Izumo takes him in, gives him food and shelter and all he asks back is to join his sorta-gang. His Ability is absolutely fucking terrifying, but Kunikida agrees and gets the HOMRA tattoo on his left forearm, bright and red and black and unmistakably powerful. Kusanagi's Ability lets him gain similar fire-wielding talents through the damned thing, so Kunikida spends his days practicing how to light trees on fire and finely-tuning his added abilities to be suited towards torture.

He briefly entertains joining Port Mafia after Kusanagi asks him why he's leaving HOMRA so soon, after two years of service and countless deaths by his hand.

It takes him a while, though he doesn't regret the way Kusanagi's smile spreads slow and sweet across his face when Kunikida tells him that he got a job. He got a job _saving people_ , and really, Kunikida owes it all to him for his seventh, eighth and ninth tattoos, and the added bonus of receiving the _Ideal_.

He leaves for the Agency, for Yokohama, at 5AM the next morning and steps into his apartment for the first time with nothing but a duffel bag and a crisp notebook in his war-torn hands.

He had changed his name again, but he's happy as Kunikida Doppo, and doesn't want to shed that comfort any time soon.  
  


 **V.**  
The moment he meets Dazai fucking Osamu, Kunikida knows in an instant that this is not a man to be trifled with.

Dazai looks at him with too-bright eyes and dark hair and bandages wrapped tightly around his skin, and says, so clearly that if Kunikida were drunk it'd strike him into sobriety, "I won't ask about yours if you won't ask about mine."

**Author's Note:**

> as always, find me at [@castrumwritings](http://castrumwritings.tumblr.com/)
> 
> kudos/comments always welcome!


End file.
